When one comes to the end of a planned trilogy one always hopes for a sense of closure. But when I first read this there was also a sense of profound disappointment: yes, wrongs were righted, evil was overcome, but at what a cost! And yet, on a second reading and armed with hindsight, that disappointment was transmuted into acceptance as I started to understand the narrative arcs that applied to the whole trilogy.

With that understanding I think that the author’s intended ending was perfectly logical and absolutely in harmony with the preceding two novels. Because it also functions well enough as a standalone novel I can see how a new reader (and that was me, once upon a time) might feel bereft in the concluding pages; but Le Guin, in running counter to our expectations of a fantasy universe, showed what an original thinker she was and how her approach both overturned and reinvigorated the epic fantasy conventions of the time.

In Tolkien’s wake came, as we know, many lesser imitations, picking up on the clichés of Dark Lords, wizards, elves, quests, magical objects and so on. Set-piece battles, end-of-chapter cliffhangers, unpronounceable names, monsters of every shape, size and species — what fun so many authors had, all hoping for a front-cover imprimatur along the lines of “comparable to The Lord of the Rings“.

Earthsea was different. Yes, there is an invented secondary world, with even its own map; we have made-up names, luckily very pronounceable; here are wizards and quests and the occasional magical object. But gone are the opposing hosts and bloody battles; missing are the interminable cliffhangers, hooks to keep us reading; apart from dragons (yes, epic fantasy almost always requires dragons) the only monsters we meet inhabit not Earthsea but the human minds.

Thus it is that A Wizard of Earthsea focused on Ged, on the shadow he’d foolishly conjured up and on his personal quest to first escape and then heal himself. The Tombs of Atuan had Tenar as the protagonist confronting the role society had allocated her, with Ged only in a supporting role — her shadow in some respects. And now, in The Farthest Shore, we are introduced to a young prince called Arren who volunteers to aid Ged against a force that is upsetting the balance of life in Earthsea. Three protagonists with three different tasks, tasks that call upon each to exert courage in the face of adversity and to exhibit other personal qualities: not just overcoming fear but also showing compassion, and demonstrating a loyalty born out of love.

The figure of Ged is the thread running through Le Guin’s trilogy, and his evolving role emphasises her insistence on balance. Occasionally the balance will tip overmuch and threaten chaos. The cause might be personal — it can be Ged’s unleashing of the shadow, or an aggrieved mage seeking vengeance against Ged and a selfish immortality — or it can be societal — a patriarchal theocratic regime in one part of Earthsea, or a land missing part of a symbol of wholeness, a yin without a yang.

The Farthest Shore is both a melancholy and a life-affirming tale. Following Ged and his young companion Arren we share their highs and lows as they travel around Earthsea’s archipelago in Ged’s sailboat Lookfar, searching the source of the malaise in the world. There is danger and succour, of the human as well as the magical kind. We contemplate the folly that is the search for immortality and the confusion and despair that comes from the loss of certainty; we share the exultation of swimming in the open sea and the breathtaking moment of meeting the dragonkind.

One final point about this haunting novel: Le Guin explores the nature of Ged and Arren’s homosocial relationship. Not quite master and disciple, nor officer and batman (as with Frodo and Sam in Tolkien’s trilogy). Each one relies on the other for support, advice, insight; and there is love here, certainly, though of a different nature from that in the author’s 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness.

But Le Guin’s male-focused trilogy, made manifestly clear by this final novel, ultimately led her to begin righting the gender balance twenty years later, starting with the heart-achingly intense Tehanu (1993). With The Farthest Shore we may achieve a closure, but there are other issues yet to address.

Ned Thorne has had a dream similar to one his Aunt Lal has had, of two cherubic-faced boys in old-fashioned clothes entering the bookshop run by his Uncle Adam. Returning — not without mishap — to the Cornish town of St Boan, young Ned has to combat with blizzards, bullies and human bugbears, the ghostly appearances of those twins being just the prelude. The key that helped him solve a mystery in the first story, In Thunder’s Pocket, may prove to have a crucial part to play in The Song of Mat and Ben.

As well as the supernatural, the second novelette in the St Boan Mystery trilogy focuses on an artistic endeavour, much as the first dealt with sculpture and the third will feature poetry. This time it’s music, as the title makes clear: the song is a ballad about the siblings, Matthew and Benjamin Pernel, whose demises a century before has caused ripples of resentment down the years. The questions the reader will inevitably ask are, Does Ned manage to solve the mystery? and How are things resolved? As usual, Joan Aiken doesn’t disappoint in bringing things to unexpected but satisfying conclusions.

The author peppers many of her stories with snippets of verse and suggestions of music. This piece is no exception, and the illustration heading chapter 3 even illustrates the opening two bars of ‘The Song of Mat and Ben’, a lively jig tune in the key of D major. The rising motif bridging a perfect fourth is reminiscent of the opening of another, more famous Cornish tune, the Obby Oss song sung every May Day in the procession winding through the streets of Padstow; indeed, we are intended to recall this ceremony in the closing pages of the book, even though the action is all set during a very wintry March instead of the summer.

This being a Joan Aiken book, however straightforward a story of suspense it appears at first sight to be one can’t help being alert to all kinds of fun the author is having along the way; two examples will illustrate what I mean. Set in Cornwall, the story maintains a sense of place by referencing such symbolic signposts as ancient mines, a seaside village and its local museum, and a small community where nearly everyone wants to know their neighbour’s business. And that the key which Ned was given by Eden in the previous book doubtless brought to the author’s mind the idea of a key to a song, which in turn provided the key to this decidedly spooky and sinister mystery.

9th August is apparently Book lover’s day, according to some anonymous and apparently self-appointed committee who decide these things.

This is despite the fact that there is no end of special days for bibliophile and bibliomanes.

World Book Day is celebrated worldwide (early March in the UK and Ireland — aimed at younger readers — 23rd April for Catalunya and most of the rest of the world) and Independent Bookstore Day on the last Saturday in April for the US. There are even weeks dedicated to the acquisition of books, for instance Independent Bookshop Week in June for the UK.

As far as I’m concerned every day is Book Lover’s Day: remember, giving or receiving a book is not just for Christmas…

Still, today is an excuse to post some gratuitous photos of books, more books and many books.

‘Nature is not unnatural. This is not a righting of the balance, but an upsetting of it. There is only one creature who can do that […] by an unmeasured desire for life.’

Sparrowhawk is speaking of humans, in Ursula Le Guin’s wonderfully immersive Earthsea fantasy The Farthest Shore (1973). And, as in all great fantasy, what he has to say — what she has to say — is as apposite to our own lives as it was in Earthsea.

‘ When we crave power over life — endless wealth, unassailable safety, immortality — then desire becomes greed. And if knowledge allies itself to that greed, then comes evil. Then the balance of the world is swayed, and ruin weighs heavy in the scale.’

“An unmeasured desire for life.” This isn’t a bad thing, surely? We almost all desire life, unless that life is unbearable. “Unmeasured” means boundless, without limits, and we all know individuals whose love of life is immense, almost exemplary in its generosity.

And yet there is a another, negative set of meanings that go with “unmeasured”. Lavish — unrestrained — intemperate. Meanings that suggest a taking of more than one’s fair share, an overweaning selfishness, a carelessness of one’s fellow humans and their needs and wants.

Do I need to labour this quote’s relevance to what is going on now, now as I write this, now as you read it? I’m guessing not: it is all too obvious.

But do we fall prey to despair? I hope not: as long as there are people who know that our desire for life should be a measured one and who understand that righting of the balance is imperative, then only can we start to reverse the seeming inevitability that evil men and their actions will prevail.

As Le Guin comments, “There is a certain bleakness in finding hope where one expected certainty.” But better hope than despair: remember what remained when the evils of Pandora’s box — that false gift that vindictive Zeus gave to Epimetheus — were released into the world.

And, as a wise child wrote, where there is hope there is life. We mustn’t let hope be snuffed out.

A young lad is sent to stay for a few days with his aunt and uncle in a coastal village in Cornwall, only to encounter mysterious goings-on involving seagulls, sculptures, a curse, a key and an egg. What is the connection between them all, and who or what is the boy from Wicca Steps?

In Thunder’s Pocket is the first of a trio of novelettes for younger readers. Set in Cornwall and featuring Ned Thorne, it is described as ‘a St Boan mystery’ — but it is equally a ghost story, a supernatural tale, as are the two sequels; in fact the official Joan Aiken site categorises the trilogy as Magic & Mystery.

Thunder’s Pocket is an epithet for the town of St Boan because of its storm-prone microclimate. We’re told St Boan is based on the fishing village of St Ives, perhaps as it was in the mid-fifties when the author and her young family lived in Cornwall. Even then it will have been not only a haunt of artists and the occasional holiday visitor but also a place set apart from the rest of the world. It’s a feeling it retains to this day.

St Boan (dedicated to a non-existent Cornish saint, perhaps a meld of Welsh surname Bowen and the prehistoric stone circle at Boscawen-Un) was the home of Malot Corby, a cantankerous sculptress of abstract forms who took offence against Ned’s Aunt Lal. After her death Lal has never been quite the same, letting her hair grow and displaying a vacant manner. It’s up to Ned to find the connections between Malot and her cousin Lal and just what needs to be done to remove the curse on his aunt.¹

At the most obvious level this spooky story is firmly focused on the magic and mystery promised. But Joan Aiken also knows what ingredients to include and how to mix them up to make her concoction feel authentic. The evil entity that survives in an egg is straight out of Russian folktale; malevolent birds emerge straight out of North European lore but are here brought up to date, with the feathered bane of seaside tourists replacing carrion crows and ravens; keys, especially when made of iron, were not only a means to reveal secrets but also to guard against malign influences; and combing hair is supposed to be a sure way to ease trauma, just as cutting it is said to excise negativity.

Ned’s relationship with his Aunt Lal opens the way to shared psychic experiences, a bond that is followed up in the sequels. Ned’s more intellectual side is perhaps encouraged and emphasised by his Uncle Adam who runs the bookshop in the town. And yet overall there is a dreamlike atmosphere pervading the narrative, a parallel reality suggested but never made explicit, which perfectly suits the brevity of the tale.

Without a doubt it firmly appealed to the child in me, a child who totally identified with Ned, the sensitive yet resourceful protagonist.

¹ Perhaps Malot was partly based on the artist Barbara Hepworth, who had returned to St Ives in 1954; this was a year before Joan Aiken had to move back to London from Cornwall so it’s quite possible their paths crossed.

My local bookshop’s Reading Challenge for July was to read a book that can be finished in a day. And thus it turned out

This is just the most perfect book; so perfect that I can scarcely bear to discuss it for fear of spoiling it. But I shall try; if at times I appear to be threading my way lightly round and through it, it’s because I fear my clumsy tread will destroy its sublime delicacy.

The Summer Book (Sommarboken in the original Swedish) is a lightly fictionalised account of a couple or so summers spent by Tove Jansson’s mother and six-year-old niece on a small island in the Gulf of Finland (that’s the stretch of water leading towards St Petersburg). Nothing much appears to happen and yet it’s so detailed you live every vicarious moment of every incident. Though Sophia’s father is occasionally in the background this is essentially a portrait of a grandmother and granddaughter’s relationship.

They squabble, they play games; they have deep philosophical discussions and have adventures. They explore theirs and other islands, they weather storms, interact with neighbours and range widely through the terrain of their imaginations. Short chapters with captivating titles — ‘Playing Venice’, ‘The Magic Forest’, ‘The Enormous Plastic Sausage’ or ‘The Crooks’, for instance — are so exquisite that a sensitive reader can only read one or at most two at a time, the better to savour and appreciate and ruminate on them. Little happens, but what does assumes great significance.

Running through it all is the sacred bond and unspoken love between grandchild and grandparent, one embarking on life, the other close to departing it; and yet there is nothing mawkish or melancholy about the to-and-fro between the pair of them, just the reality of an eternal present. Representatives of a wonderfully creative bohemian family, Signe and Sophia are the epitome of vivacity even when appearing to do nothing, simply because of the insights we get into their lively imaginations.

In actual life Signe had died aged 88 in 1970, and The Summer Book is both a portrait of and a memorial to Tove’s mother in the final years of her life. Despite creaking bones, perpetual tiredness and occasional irritability Signe’s brain retains a youthfulness that in part comes from interaction with a curious six-year-old, a child who swears, cries and imparts nuggets of wisdom in equal parts.

I’ve focused on a relationship but we mustn’t forget the eternal draw of the island, a microcosm of the world we live in, both isolating and insulating, where we can go to both lose and find ourselves. The minute observations of nature, of the changes in the season, of the constant adaptations required to survive in an island situation are all brought out with subtlety and sensitivity.

Esther Freud’s foreword (to be also read as an afterword, I would suggest) beautifully echoes the allure of this book: when she declares that she would need “a whole summer to discover everything there is to do” on the island she could also be suggesting that we’d need multiple re-readings — and then some — to discover all that this book has to offer.

But then, that’s the joy of perfection.

A post on the fine I read that in a book blog strongly recommended this novel to me; and Jake’s illustrated review on his brilliant Tygertale blog confirms my respect for it. I equally enjoyed Jansson’s Art in Nature, a collection of short stories translated by Thomas Teal who was also responsible for putting this novel into readable English.

In the 2018 Ultimate Reading Challenge this is a book by someone from another country (in this case, Finland).

Dido Twite has been sailing with HMS Thrush for a goodly period of time. At least, so we may gather from a close reading of Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles, particularly Night Birds on Nantucket, The Stolen Lake, Limbo Lodge (also known as Dangerous Games) and The Cuckoo Tree.

It’s very likely that, after 18 months on board a whaler — during which time she has sailed from the North Sea, through the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north to the Arctic Circle, and then back around the tip of South America into the North Atlantic — she has subsequently circumnavigated the globe for another fifteen months on board the Thrush.

What do we know about this naval vessel, from actual history and from fiction?

We may possibly envisage its original appearance from an 1807aquatint made and published by Robert Dodd, now archived at the British Museum. Entitled A Brig Sloop of War, reconoitring the Bay of Boulogne, it depicts ‘a two-masted ship with one row of cannon’ (that is a foremast, a mainmast and eighteen carronades) of a type belonging to the Royal Navy’s Cruizer class.

HMS Beagle in the seaways of Tierra del Fuego, painting by Conrad Martens during the voyage of the Beagle, from 1831 to 1836 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

We may instead imagine the Thrush to be a 10-gun Cherokee class brig-sloop such as HMS Beagle in which Darwin was sailing, coincidentally around the time Dido was voyaging between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Before the Beagle sailed on its first voyage a forecastle had been added to the superstructure in 1825, along with with a mizzen mast to improve handling, as can be seen in the print of the sloop-of-war in the Straits of Magellan in early 1834.

HMS Beagle in the Straits of Magellan (image: Wikimedia Commons)

We know however that the original HMS Thrush was indeed a brig-sloop of the Cruizer class, one of many built or acquired by the Royal Navy in the later years of the Napoleonic wars. They were two-masted square-rigged vessels, with just a foremast and a mainsail, their overall length around a hundred feet and with a keel of about 77 feet. Light and manoeuvrable, they carried eighteen 6-pounder guns — short-range carronades — and a crew of around a hundred in addition to officers and marines.

Many of the Cruizer class in fact bore bird names just as the Thrush did, names such as Swallow, Raven, Harrier, Redwing, Ringdove, Peacock, Philomel, Sparrowhawk, Crane, Curlew, Pelican, Heron, Halcyon and Penguin. Our example, however, first began life in 1794 as The Prince of Wales in HM Revenue Service, not becoming the Thrush until 1806 when it was bought by the Royal Navy and refitted over two or more years in Portsmouth.

In Mansfield ParkJane Austen has Fanny Price’s brother William joining the Thrush at Portsmouth around this time, for it’s probable the author saw it there herself in 1808. Its first commander was Charles Webb; by February 1809 it was seeing action in the Caribbean under Commander Henry Spark Jones when it was involved in the blockade of San Domingo.

Later that year it was ignominiously turned into a powder hulk, storing gunpowder out of harm’s way. In 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic conflict, we’re told it foundered off Jamaica before being salvaged and sold; after that its history is unclear.

Here’s what may have happened to it in the alternative history that is the Wolves Chronicles. That’s assuming, however, that either the Navy has re-acquired the vessel (possible, but of course undocumented in our own world) or that it has ordered a new vessel of the same name (equally possible in our fictional timeline but unrecorded in reality, the two known examples being from the second half of the century).

1820s: According to The Whispering Mountain Captain Owen Hughes from Wales is in command of the Thrush, patrolling the China Seas. (Strictly speaking, he should be Commander Owen Hughes, if this is a brig-sloop, but commanders apparently were often addressed as ‘Captain’.) His son, also called Owen, spends his childhood on board the Thrush until an uprising in the fictional Chinese province of Poohoo in the 1830s, which is when he and his mother are sent by tea clipper back to Wales. Sadly his mother dies on the voyage home.

At some stage Captain Hughes will have relinquished command of the Thrush (we aren’t told the circumstances) though he later returns to it, as recounted in The Stolen Lake.

1835. The Thrush, now under the command of Captain Osbaldeston, arrives at the port of Nantucket in pursuit of the schooner Dark Diamond and their rascally crew. Osbaldeston is described as the captain of an “English sloop” manned by “blue-jackets”. Night Birds on Nantucket ends with Dido on board the “lumbering” craft, apparently en route to England, “a-sailing to London River.”

In The Stolen Lake we learn that after leaving Nantucket the Thrush encounters “first, a pirate vessel, and then a Hanoverian merchantman”; the ship is then diverted to Bermuda for repairs, which is where Captain Hughes takes the place of Osbaldeston, who has been promoted. Extraordinarily, the Thrush is now described as a “big three-masted man-o’-war.” According to Dido, it is also “one o’ these new-fangled steam sloops” with a screw propeller prioviding an “excellent turn of speed” — and therefore no longer the lumbering craft overhauled by a whaler (as was the case in Night Birds in Nantucket).

The Leda-class frigate HMS Pomone from a colour lithograph by T G Dutton, after a painting by G F St John (image: Wikimedia Commons)

Are we being misled by focusing solely on the terms sloop and man-o’-war? Midway between a sloop and a man-o’-war was the frigate. Illustrated above is HMS Pomone, an example of a 38-gun Leda-class frigate, of a type common in the early 19th-century and continually modified during the time of the Wolves Chronicles.

The Return to Hong Kong. The Vulture Passing the Battery Upon Tygris Island (from Operations in the Canton River in April 1847. London: Henry Graves. 1848. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)

I’ve referenced this next painting — The Return to Hong Kong— before; it shows a steam paddle frigate in 1847 in the period between the First Opium War (1839-1842) and the Second (1856-1860). Launched in 1843, this naval craft (also named after a bird, obviously!) apparently also served in the Crimean War before being sold off in 1866. Being a frigate it is smaller than a man-o’-war, its mainmast missing to accommodate the funnel. It’s also equipped with paddles, unlike the screw-driven Thrush as described in The Stolen Lake.

Whatever type or class the Thrush of the Chronicles may have been, in Dido’s world the British navy must have been more innovative than in our own world where screw-driven steam warships didn’t come into general use until the late 1840s; the Thrush has clearly been adapted to steam power, but when? And how has a hundred-foot brig-sloop with just two masts morphed into a much larger man-o’-war with three masts and a funnel for the coal-fired steam engine that powers the screw propeller? Can the Bermuda repairs also have included massive remodelling, refurbishment and refitting? Or did the author mean to use the term sloop-of-war rather than man-of-war? If there’s a solution to all this I haven’t yet found it.

After Bermuda the Thrush has orders to sail south to a South American port to aid a British ally (The Stolen Lake). Then it is sent in pursuit of Lord Herodsfoot, who is traced first to Easter Island and then the Spice Islands (Limbo Lodge).

1836. We learn that the mid-thirties of the 19th century represent the final phase of the China Tea Wars, during which naval ships are sent to protect British merchants from possible attack by rival Chinese warlords (The Whispering Mountain). Captain Hughes is therefore back in a region he knows well. One must assume that it is around now, in the first few months of 1836, that the captain sustains the head injury that he is to nurse all the way back to England. No doubt that steam power speeds the Thrush on its way home, though as coal supplies cannot be guaranteed along the way it’s almost certain that sail power does a lot of the donkey work.

Whether the Thrush continues west through the Indian Ocean and north through the Atlantic or back east the way it came we’re not told — though, as discussed before, the westward voyage may be the best option. Its last known position is Chichester, Sussex, on the last day of October 1836, when Captain Hughes and Dido leave the vessel to take an urgent dispatch to London…

Though under new (but still enthusiastic!) management, The Classics Clubhave announced another of their eagerly expected Classics Spins for August. A random number between 1 and 20 is generated and whatever is on my personal list is my selection for reading in that month.

I’m genetically programmed to be lazy so I’ve rustled up a previous list, and with appropriate replacements for titles already read these are they:

The number generated will be announced on August 1st and hopefully I’ll have read and maybe even reviewed it before the end of the month. (That’ll be a tough call if it turns out to be Middlemarch or Sartor Resartus!)

Update

Just seen that the spin is number 9: Anton Chekhov’sEarly Stories.

I know a number of fellow bloggers who participate in the spin, so I’m looking forward to seeing their lists and final selection.

Numbers 2, 3, 11 and 15 will actually be rereads, but in most cases I will have first completed them many decades ago and so the details will have escaped my goldfish-level memory

We come now to my final post analysing aspects of Joan Aiken’s 1971 instalment in the Wolves Chronicles.

Here I want to examine themes in The Cuckoo Treethat not only distinguish it from other titles in the series but also show it sharing memes and tropes common across the Chronicles.

Birds

The title of the novel itself references the cuckoo, its name formed from the male’s repetitive call which, heard in or around April each year, traditionally marks the first day of Spring. The female cuckoo is also known for laying its eggs in other birds’ nests, their shape, colour and form apparently closely resembling the host birds’ eggs. The Cuckoo Tree itself shelters two ‘orphans’, Cris (who happily discovers she has a brother and a grandmother) and Dido herself (who feels bereft, betrayed by her own father and lacking ‘someone of her own’ to love and be loved by).

Dido’s surname Twite derives from the little finch, Carduelis flavirostris, not so common as it once was (with numbers dangerously low in Britain). Dido is also the archetypal ‘Cockney sparrow’ though she is never ever called that.

This novel has almost the last, if not the last, mention of HMS Thrush, the naval ship under Captain Hughes’ command in which Dido has sailed around the world. Nominally described as a sloop, it has taken Dido from Nantucket to South America and across the Pacific Ocean to Easter Island and the Spice Islands before finally landing at Chichester on the south coast of England.

St Paul’s Cathedral — where the coronation is due to be held — is code-named the Wren’s Nest, presumably on the basis of it being designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren. Its launch into the Thames is circumvented by Yan and Rachel the elephant creating a giant cat’s cradle of ropes and cables around it, an echo of the cat’s cradles that Tobit taught Cris on board the Gentlemen’s Relish.

There is a passing mention of a parrot named, appropriately for such imitative birds, Polyglot — Tobit and Cris recall knowing such a bird when they were toddlers on Tiburon Island in the West Indies.

Finch, thrush, wren, parrot — all birds but presented in such a variety of contexts it would be easy to miss any connections or associations.

Downfall of villains

The endings of many of the Chronicles are distinguished by the fate of the principal villains, which frequently involves a quite literal downfall. So far we’ve seen Miss Slighcarp, Queen Ginevra, Manoel Roy and Lord Malin (along with his two cronies Prigman and Bilk) fall off cliffs, down abysses or in collapsing towers.

The Cuckoo Tree follows these chronological precedents, and flags up that it will do so in a rather bold way: the villains plan to sell the Tegleaze heirloom (a miniature painting featuring a collapsing Tower of Babel) to the Margrave of Bad Fallingoff. As it happens, the two principal evil-doers do indeed have a bad falling-off: Miles Tegleaze trips and falls down a well, while Colonel FitzPickwick is precipated (or perhaps precipitates himself) off the precipice that is the west front of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Scrobbling

‘Scrobbling’ is a term borrowed from John Masefield’s two related children’s novels, The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights. In effect it means kidnapping. Poor Dido is indeed a youngster who is somewhat scrobbled, but she’s not the only one. Cris is one who, though not captured in the strictest sense, is nevertheless kept under virtual house arrest from a young age. Tobit is also apprehended after a hue and cry, falsely accused of theft and illegally sentenced to transportation, then surreptitiously abandoned down a well. Finally, Dido is scrobbled by or through the machinations of her own father before being rescued by a tiger.

Drowning, and being underground

The Chronicles feature a lot of instances of drowning, or at least the threat of it. In The Cuckoo Tree Tobit fortunately escapes drowning in the well near the prison, but Miles doesn’t. In a sense the well also counts as incarceration underground. Later on, Tobit follows Mrs Lubbage’s rat underground from a cellar to the void created for the rollers under St Paul’s Cathedral. And of course, the conspirators’ plan was for the king and congregation to drown in the Thames as the cathedral slid inexorably on the rollers down to the river.

Miniatures

The Cuckoo Tree has a theme that so far in the series is unique: the focus on miniatures. It’s as though Dido, having (as we now know) circumnavigated the globe, is required to consider the microcosm in the paracosm that is her world.

First there is Cousin Wilfred’s doll’s house, located in Tegleaze Manor. Then there are the glove puppets from the puppet theatre — what Miles Tegleaze refers to as his ‘marionettes’, though they are nothing of the sort — which seem to take a life of their own for anyone under the influence of Tante Sannie’s hallucinogenic joobie nuts.

Next there is the Tegleaze Luck-piece, revealed as a miniature painted on ivory by no less an artist than Pieter Bruegel the Elder; it is of the Tower of Babel at the point of collapse.

Finally we note that the Dean of St Paul’s and the King are seen building a house of cards, though presciently it keeps collapsing following a gust of wind or a shake of the cathedral.

Mistaken identity

Somebody appearing to be other than they are is a recurring theme in the Chronicles, and The Cuckoo Tree is no exception. The butler Gusset, for instance, mistakes Dido for Lady Rowena Palindrome (he clearly has seen neither young woman before). Gusset later even has problems getting Dido Twite’s name right.

There are more misidentifications to come: Cris is mistaken for a boy when Dido first meets her; Miles Mystery is revealed to be Miles Tuggles and then Miles Tegleaze, a dubious (and devious) claimant for the Tegleaze estate; the hidden hoboy player for the puppet theatre turns out to be Dido’s Pa; the smugglers hide under the collective name the Wineberry Men while individually bearing ciphers borrowed from sheep-counting traditions. In addition the footmen at Tegleaze Manor prove disloyal to their employer, and Colonel FitzPickwick turns out to be no trustworthy family lawyer, having cheated Lady Tegleaze out of her money over some considerable time.

Voyage and Return

Like some kind of endless board game nearly all the Wolves Chronicles involve an arduous journey to resolve a life-threatening issue, followed by a return to the starting point after completion. Bonnie and Sylvia come back in triumph to Willoughby Chase, for example, Dido treks across islands or to and from a mountainous kingdom, or Owen returns to his grandfather’s home in Pennygaff after a hectic crisscrossing of Mid Wales. In this novel it is Dido working her way back to Sussex and the Cuckoo Tree after an overland race to London.

Quest

To a greater or lesser extent all the Chronicles exhibit aspects of most of the so-called ‘seven basic plots’ that some commentators have identified as common to most human narratives. Overcoming the Monster, to name just an obvious example, refers as much to inhuman human adversaries as non-human ones, of a type evident in each volume of the series.

I’ve already mentioned Voyage and Return above so I’ll just note the Quest theme to finish off this discussion: Dido has to get the naval dispatch to the First Lord of the Admiralty, whatever the cost and regardless of severe obstacles impeding her progress. Less a quest for an object and more to deliver it, Dido’s difficulties continue right up to and beyond the figurative eleventh hour.

Unusually, this instalment of the Chronicles is followed immediately by the next, Dido and Pa, though Joan wasn’t to write it until a good many years later. However, those who aren’t diehard Dido fans may be relieved to hear I shan’t be revisiting Dido and her adventures just yet.

The cover is scarred and dog-eared, but no matter. I fall on it with delight, hand over my change, squirrel it away to peruse at leisure. Pre-owned or pre-loved but then discarded, I hope to offer it affection in my turn. I scurry home to begin the conversation.

But what’s this I see?

The indelible tattoos of ownership are all over the title story. Neatly ruled lines in red, blue and black disfigure the pages. Glyphs — of hearts, clock faces, asterisks, a cross, even a supine stick figure — patrol the margins. Emphatic verticals hem in selected paragraphs. An ex-lover has sought to control the text, constrain with chains of interpretation, explain what the author meant rather than let her speak her own mind.

I had hoped to form a personal relationship; I’m now confronted with an abused entity. It will be difficult, almost impossible, to form my own impressions, to establish an open dialogue, to enjoy the proffered delights with total innocence.

But then I pause, and reflect. When I’ve had my way will it not be likely that I too will abandon this mistress of the moment? Will I not publicly discuss her strengths and failings? Will I not foist my own interpretation on her thoughts, discuss her form, palm her insights off as my own?

Though I will never mark her with own brands will I not, in my turn, also be an inconstant lover?